The gelling of truly awesome and useful communities is hard to achieve through a deterministic, step-by-step process. What I find useful to focus on is a more iterative, trial and error process along these lines:

(1) Be where communities are forming – density generally means more opportunity. Per ModusPonies, move downtown or wherever you need to be to improve your odds of achieving initial critical mass.

(2) Be prepared to adapt and flex. A community is made up of… wait for it… multiple people. Who may have somewhat different skills, goals and values and may want something similar, but different to what you were initially looking for. A tight filter and a rigid template not only lowers your odds but might lead you to miss a maximization opportunity you hadn’t thought of.

(3) Nurture the initial tender shoots of community and cherish existing high-functioning communities when you find yourself in them. Along the lines of Peopleware’s concept of “teamicide”, realize that it’s much more efficient to not disrupt, degrade or kill off existing high-functioning communities than to start over from scratch.